The SEO Guys :: Web Design & SEO

There has been a flurry of entrants into the Search Engine Optimisation market in the past year or so. Judging by the horrendous rates some are charging, money rather than service seems to be the main motivation. Judging by the horror stories from clients who have arrived on my doorstep after being ripped off by sharp operators, in some instances there is evidence of a serious deficiency in both ethics and skills in some cases. I have a new client who spent almost $30,000 last year, with no work having been done on the actual site, no evidence of link increases, and according to traffic statistics, site visitors have gone DOWN by 60% - so read the following sections carefully.

So, how do you choose an SEO firm to entrust your business to? I believe that there are some simple checks to put in place before committing yourself to any SEO proposal, no matter how attractive it might seem.

The following sections lists a dozen few ways you can identify some potentially good SEO firms, and how to eliminate the dodgy ones, and thus reduce your chances of being disappointed.

1.) How Well Does Their Own SEO Site Rank?

Do a search for search engine optimisation, seo rates and/or seo firm on the country-specific version of each of the big 3 major search engines - e.g. Google.co.nz, Yahoo.co.nz or XtraMSN.co.nz. Alternatively, go to the main Google.com etc site, and search for nz seo, seo rates, or new zealand search engine optimisation (or your own country-specific version of those). The SEO market has become very competitive out there, but you should expect the SEO business you are contemplating doing business with to be on Page One on each search engine! If not, drop them from the list of possibles, because how much help could they possibly be to you? A list of 5-10 potential firms should quickly emerge from this process.

2.) Request For Proposal

From your initial research, you should have a list of contenders you are considering entrusting your business to. Contact each, and request a site review. This usually a free service, and will invariably result in a detailed analysis of your site, and a proposal which sets out what remedial action is required and should include an indicative costing to achieve this. Having now received a series of these, apply the following criteria against each one.

3.) Guaranteed Inclusion in Google/Yahoo/MSN

If an SEO firm offers a guarantee of inclusion into any major search engine, or assures you that they have a special relationship with a major search engine, immediately drop them from the list of possibles. Frankly, search engines simply do not enter into such relationships. That would be as likely as a close friendship between a poacher and a gamekeeper!

4.) What Are They Proposing?

There are two key ingredients to web site optimisation, and if both are not assessed and addressed, drop the SEO firm’s proposal from the list of possibilities!

• The first element is on-site optimisation of individual pages to improve organic or natural search engine rankings. This involves keyword research with associated analysis of the business products and services. This is the most important aspect because it delivers ongoing traffic which is essentially free after the initial work is carried out.
• The second key element is link analysis and recommended remedial action. Basically, the more links to your site from trusted sites carrying high Page Rank, the better. Insufficient links can mean your site appears not worth indexing. Proposals to increase your 1-way back-links from web directories and other trusted sites are good. Use of blogs, and article marketing is also current best practice. However, should there be any suggestions for participation in link propagation schemes, or placing main emphasis on reciprocal link strategies etc, drop the SEO firm from your list because they are not up to date with current best practice.

5.) Google Adwords & Yahoo Search Marketing

Some SEO firms boast that they are certified Adwords practitioners etc. That’s all well and good, but what they mean is that with YOUR money, they are real confident of getting you top placing in the keyword bidding warfare! There can be some short term benefits in that, but guarantees along those lines are not overly helpful to your business. If a proposal places primary emphasis on Pay-Per-Click, slip it down to the bottom of the pile!

6.) References

Can your SEO firm provide you with some reference sites they’ve worked on successfully, case studies, and/or some clients or web developers you can contact for comment? Bear in mind that there are likely to be some commercial sensitivities that apply constraints.

7.) Is There Value in 1 Year Contracts?

Frankly, not to you! The hallmark of a professional, ethical operator will be a fixed price contract to carry out the initial remedial action on the site. As a reassurance, they will usually let you know that ongoing support is available if required, because the rules of the SEO game do keep changing. The best SEO practitioners do not attempt to lock you into 1 year contract because they know the initial work will often take 8-12 weeks to deliver full benefits, and the project cost will usually include a built-in monitoring component over that initial period. It is, in my view, a little unethical to double-dip on the project costs!

Not only that, but what if you are not happy with the results of the SEO firm or their level of service? A 1 year contract might just guarantee you receive a full 12 months of unsatisfactory services! My advice - do not lock yourself into a long-term contract until you have grown comfortable with the SEO team you are dealing with.

8.) Fixed Price Contracts

Insist on one! A professional SEO firm will set out exactly what is wrong with your site, and explain the precise remedial action in a coherent and logical fashion. The actual work will be specified and a total cost provided. It is customary to require payment in advance. This is usually 100% for smaller jobs, which I would define as less than $1500. For larger projects, expect to pay a 50% deposit with balance on completion and/or when Top 30 rankings on agreed keyword terms show a demonstrable improvement.

9.) How Much Should It Cost?

Well, each proposal should come down to a judgement by each SEO firm on how many hours of work are going to be involved in the project. However, some seem more inclined to make an assessment of your ability to pay in big chunks! There can be obvious, huge discrepancies - its common to see variations of 1000% e.g. you will see that some firms initial cost proposal can be 10 times that of competing SEO firms! From your point of view, you want to know;

• How many pages are going to be amended
• What will be done by way of increasing incoming links
• Are articles being published, and if so, how many?

Reduce it to a known quantity, compare apples with apples! When you are systematic about it, the choices become more obvious, and a decision becomes easier!

10.) You Need to Know What Will Be Done

An SEO professional will involve you at each step of the process, providing you with a preview of all site changes before implementation. You will be able to measure progress of the work on a page by page basis, and see the results in your site traffic statistics as well as SE ranking reports. As in all aspects of life, failing to plan is planning to fail! If there is no plan, no road map, don’t expect a happy ending or any rights of redress.

11.) Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO

There are other danger signs to be aware of. If your SEO proposal suggests cloaking, redirections, doorway pages, hallway pages, invisible text, multiple domain names for duplicated content etc, immediately drop the company from the list of possibles!

There are many Black Hat SEO operators who prefer to attempt to subvert the Search Engine guidelines, essentially looking for rapid, short-term ranking gains by ANY means, instead of taking a responsible, professional approach. If your site is caught up in any scheme like this, banishment from search engine indexes is assured! Essentially, good White Hat SEO involves thoughtful restructuring of site content, within the SE guidelines and parameters, and taking no risks of any kind.

12.) Who Are You Dealing With?

Does their site have some personal profile information? Are you dealing with a seasoned IT industry professional, a kid fresh out of high school, someone moonlighting from their primary job, or maybe somebody who has English as a second (or third) language? SEO is very much about words, semantics, languages skills and this, plus broad SEO project experience over several years, should be a key indicator to consider!

Your web site is an integral part of your business. The people you work with should have an intuitive understanding of your business, products and services, and should by now have demonstrated that they have given your particular circumstances some personal attention. Some, on the other hand, may have merely used automated site assessment tools. From the initial proposal, and exchange of emails with questions and answers to clarify any issues that have arisen, do you feel a sense of rapport with anyone? The best people to work with are those you are comfortable with.

I hope that this has proven a useful and thought-provoking summary of how to weed out the space cadets, cowboys and make-a-quick-buck operators. I really hope you do find yourself a competent, professional SEO practitioner, because they are out there, toiling away. doing a great job for great people like you!

Good luck!

One of the advantages touted by blog proponents is the ability to use your blog (and/or other blogs) to automatically add “fresh” content to your site. Search engines like regularly updated content, and will get in the habit of dropping in to see whats new!

However, as you will have quickly discovered if you’ve had a go at this already, getting the content flowing is somewhat tricky. Everybodys talking about it… but nobody’s saying hey, you can do it this way!

It depends a little on how your site is constructed. For normal people (read non-technical types) who are intent on good search engine rankings, you’ve probably had the good sense to build your site in HTML. That actually makes it a litle bit harder! It just seems that all the web-geeks out there use PHP or similar arcane web construction processes, and of course they make this stuff look easy. However, us normal people can be left sucking air a bit…

RSS to HTML - to use JavaScript or not?

There are quite a few JavaScript RSS to HTML applications available - some free, some at modest cost. My advice? Don’t go near them! The problem with JavaScript here, as in any other area, is that the search engines will simply skip right on by that section of your page. Yep, that’s right - a complete waste of time if you are trying to deliver “fresh” content that a search engine spider will find and index. 

RSS to HTML - use a hybrid PHP solution?

Nothing worth having comes easy… but hey, you know that already! Until someone comes up with a better/easier solution, you are going to have to get your hands dirty with code! What I found, after a day of searching down dead-ends, was a nifty little application called CaRP. Its a PHP-based tool, there is a free version, and it actually works! An example is midway down the page at The SEO Guys site where I’ve extracted and displayed a blog & directory feed from my own site, plus a third feed from an external site.

Achieving this took an hour or so - uploading CaRP, installing a MySQL database for it, running the configuration file, and tweaking settings to display the feed as required. A small block of PHP code must be installed in the HTML page where you wish to display the feed. Execution of PHP scripts within an HTML page has a couple of requirements.

- First, your Hosts server must be configured to allow this.
- Second, you will have to edit (or create) the .htaccess file in your site’s root directory and add a small block of code that allows script processing for your site. This can be configured as site-wide, or for a single page only.

CaRP allows multiple ways of customising the way feeds are displayed. For a start, you can set global formatting to apply to all feeds from within the config file. E.g. you might want to set a default font size on channel titles, and a different size on text within items. You might also want to change the total number of items displayed per listing, and set all links to open in a new window. (Recommended!)  

Then, within the individual HTML page where you specify the feeds to be displayed, you can add different formatting attributes to different feeds. In the example above, all site feeds are displayed as a bulleted lists.
  
For a closer look at the PHP code that achieves the current display, details of .htaccess changes, and for the download location of CaRP etc, go to the following page - RSS to HTML via CaRP

The CaRP application has good documentation, which you will probably have to read… yes, when all else fails, read the instructions!

Good luck!

SEO work for your blog is no different to search engine optimisation on your main site - youve got to work at it. Ok, so you’ve created your nice shiny new blog, and you’ve been adding high quality postings containing lots of useful information on a regular basis for a few weeks (or months)… whats next?

Review Your Blog

First, take stock of your blog’s set-up, and make sure its ready for debut;

1. Do your postings have some relevant key word content in the headings? If you’re intending to improve your overall ranking across search engines, remember to “optimise” the pages just as you would any other page of your site. Decide on the keyword phrase you are targeting, make sure its used in the heading. Make sure its highlighted in the body text, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.
2. Do your postings contain a “clickable” link or two back to your site? By this I mean a “proper” link in the format The SEO Guys Blog and not just your plain URL. To build traffic, you want to make it easy for people to get to your site!
3. Does each posting contain your “Author Details Panel” that credits the articles and postings to you, including your (clickable) site URL information? Make your links open in a new window - thats a kind gesture to those who’d like to return and finish reading the original page…
4. Have you made a statement of your copyright constraints, if any? Perhaps you should encourage people to copy and distribute your blog content, providing the Author Panel remains intact? That would be the best way to ensure widest distribution, and the consequent proliferation of valuable 1-way links back to your site!

Blog MarketingYou will probably want other people to read your blog in order that they may appreciate your literary genius, right? But of course, nobody know where its at yet, so you’ve got to give it some publicity. The first step should be to add a prominent link to it on your own web site, or sites - pretty obvious, you’d think? However, in all the excitement, that is sometimes overlooked!

More importantly, if you want it to start generating lots of nice new incoming links, and generating serious traffic increases, you’ve got to actively “market” your blog to the places that blog readers go… and “Where is that, pray tell me do?” I hear you say…

Well, the ping services you’ve added earlier are all well and good, but due to the volume of spam and garbage postings, some discipline had to be installed into the blog process to exert some control. Your site is no doubt “pinging” a variety of servers each time you create an entry. However, before any significant transfer activity takes place, you will have to front up and formally register yourself and your blog with as many of those services as possible.

The process is analogous to submitting to a normal search engine or directory, and pretty much for the same reasons. In some cases you may be asked for a reciprocal link - not too much to ask for the favour about to be rendered to you. In other cases, a “donation” might be requested. Before handing over the cash, have the sense to check the Google Page Rank of the site… its got to be high (6+) to be worth it!

The challenge is finding all these blog directories… so we’ve added a category on our Directory especially for links them, see; Blog Directories By the time you’ve spent a day working through the 150+ directories accessible from the various links, you’ll be in good shape to get that traffic counter ticking along. Your postings, and the consequent “ping” to the various services, should now have your content distribution flowing right along!

Good luck!

Implementing a Blog (weB log) is an excellent way to steadily increase the the depth of content on your site in an easy and efficient manner. There are numerous benefits, because a Blog, if properly used, enables you to;

• distribute new information to clients and prospective clients
• efficiently increase site content by rapidly adding new material
• provide “advertorial” material to other sites
• increase links to your site as your Blog contents are disseminated across other sites on the ‘net.
• increase “deep link” count to internal pages e.g. www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/archives/articles/Your_Tips
• increase traffic as people find extracts from your Blog, and come looking for the source
• increase your credibility as people find lots of useful, up to date information on your site

Utilising a Blog as a business enhancement tool is far superior to a newsletter. There is minimal trouble to get a blog up and running, but make sure you host it on YOUR site. You have the choice of establishing a “hosted’ blog on www.Wordpress.org and other Blog software services, but the greatest benefits will be accrued if you get it up and running at www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/

Software

In our case, we’ve used Wordpress (www.Wordpress.org ) an Open Source application that not only has all the required “bells and whistles” but is easy to install, set up, and manage. It has an excellent “web browser” interface that means you can add new material from your desk, or from home. Hell, you can even configure it to accept and post incoming emails from yourself!

There are some basic system requirements - your (Apache) server must support PHP, and MySQL databases. These days, that’s level of technology is available on most “basic” level hosting packages.

Installation

If you’ve got cpanel hosting with Fantastico, you can do the Wordpress installation in a few minutes because the installation scripts are probably pre-installed already for you! If not, it might take a little longer, but the Wordpress guys take pride in the “5 minute install” concept. It is really easy - even if you’ve got to download the application, unzip it, upload it to your site into it’s own directory, add a new MySQL database, add a user, start the configuration file and insert the database / user /password details into the configuration file, it should be up and running inside 30 minutes. Be a good idea to read through the “Read Me ” file before you start… the instructions are clear, concise, and in a logical and coherent order! Pity all documentation was not like that!

Configuration

With Wordpress, there are a handful of system settings to consider once you’ve got your blog operational. Of these, I’d say the three most important are as follows;

1.) Options / Writing / Update Services

The setting for the automatic update services, where blog search engines, directories and news feed services are “pinged” each time you add new content. By default, Wordpress includes a few services, some of which will in turn update other services. However, you will probably want the widest coverage possible, and to extend that list to include all known services! Takes a little longer to process a new posting, but means you get the best overall result… and that’s what its all about! There is a list of possibilities you can copy at www.comauth.co.nz/ping-page.htm

Copy and paste the ones you want to use into the “Update Services” panel at bottom of this page; www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-writing.php and choose Update Settings to add them permanently.

2.) Options / Permalinks

As they put it; “By default WordPress uses web URL’s which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.”

From an SEO point of view, we’ve chosen the numeric options so that our URL’s not only look sensible, but the Search Engines will be also be able to navigate them. However, getting this arcane bit of trickery to work requires you to implement the supplied “mod_rewrite” in your .htaccess file… if your are developing a glazed look about now, just bear with me a little longer!

The .htaccess file is a dangerous area to be playing in, as a mistake in this file can render your site inaccessible - until the Host Company’s support guy sorts it out for you - usually by renaming it! How do I know so much about this shit? Well, it happened to ME! :-)

You should have installed your blog into its own directory, which minimises the potential problems substantially! Wordpress provides the correct “mod_rewrite” code in;

www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php - its nasty looking stuff, as you can see below;

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /yourblog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /yourblog/index.php [L]

1. So, choose the Numeric Option
2. Copy it into a text file - e.g. open Notepad, paste the code in.
3. Save it as htaccess.txt in your local copy of your site
4. Choose Update Settings in Wordpress Options / Permalinks
5. Use FTP to upload htaccess.txt into your BLOG directory - Please, NOT your root directory!
6. Using your FTP application, rename the htacces.txt file to .htaccess

Open your Blog, browse around it and (hopefully) not only will everything be working, but the URL’s will now not have any of those dreadful &, ? or = thingy’s embedded in them. If its not working… the Wordpress support forums offer rapid response times to such teething problems. However, you should at least be able to access the Blog directory with your FTP client and rename .htaccess back to htaccess.txt and bring it back to life while you await a response from the Wordpress forum.
3.) Categories

From an SEO perspective, its important to develop a good Category Structure, because the category names are going to be embedded as “tags” in all your Blog posts, a little like the concept of the “keyword meta-tag” and this will help define and describe your content, especially in and

Content

Now that you’ve got the basics sorted out, start populating your blog with some quality content. I recommend writing it in an HTML editor such as FrontPage) and making sure it’s spell-checked as you go. Once you’ve got it formatted the way you want, go to the Wordpress / Write / Write Page and paste it in. Add the Title, select your Category/s from the right menu, and click the “Save and Continue Editing” button. You will then have a preview of your article in the lower section of the page. Double-check the formatting, and when you are happy with it, choose “Publish.”

Blog Search Engine’s and Directories

Once you’ve got some content built up over a couple of months, you will then want to get serious about getting it distributed to blog search engines and directories… So, in the next article we will outline how to go about this process.

Have you had trouble getting DMOZ to update your site’s Title after a change of business name etc? It can be a long wait for attention!

Well, someone at Microsoft was listening to webmaster’s comments and MSN have responded! Now, you can at least get MSN’s search results to show your correct site title by adding a meta-tag or two on your Home page. They suggest either;

• (meta content=”NOODP” name=”ROBOTS” /)
• (meta content=”NOODP” name=”msnbot” /)

(NB: I’ve had to change the “< " and ">” to get the tag to display)

Now, if you were an optimist, you would use BOTH meta-tags in the hope that some other SE’s will eventually follow MSN’s example, and check for the tag…

Well, on the 28th day of being in the country, it was time to make a brief exit to meet the rather quaint Thai immigration requirements. Here in the Kingdom, you can stay for 30 days, after which you must leave - but you can come straight back again and stay another 30 days.
From Bangkok, visa runs are offerd by several companies; and there is some difficulty in finding them on the Internet - although they do advertise in the local newspapers, apparently. And thats fine, if you are a “newspaper” person. Well, I am not, I’m a ‘net guy! Eventually, I found an obscure reference on a Thai / falang forum… ended up with 3 web site references. Emailed one, and 2 weeks on have yet to receive a response! The next had no phone number…

The 3rd had both phone and emails listed, so I tried calling in the morning but no answer - so I sent an email. Tried the number again after lunch, got “Claudio” on the line, and booked myself in for 7th June. Hell, I even got a response to my email that evening, confirming the booking etc. Now that’s what we like, right??? Works for me!
Booking the Bangkok Visa Run

Two pieces of advice;

• DO NOT leave the visa run until the last day!
• DO NOT forget to BOOK your visa run with the operator!

A nice young man from Singapore approached me on arrival at the Tesco Lotus food court at On Nut, enquiring if I was going on the visa run to Ban Laem. A “guy at work” had told him to turn up at 7:30am and look for a group of Caucasians (aka falangs). His relief was obvious, when I assured him that I was… because his visa expired that day! What was not quite so good though, was the mini-bus was fully booked, and he could not go with us!!!
He was last seen, heading glumly towards the exit, his only option that day being a complicated series of public transport (bus) rides to Ban Laem, and negotiating the touts and “agents” all by himself if he ever actually made the border! An object lesson for all who follow! His other option was to book for the next day, and pay the 500Tbht fine.
Back to Claudio, proprietor of  Sawasdee Transport Co Ltd, and his immaculately presented, shiny new Toyota mini-bus… he rapidly introduced himself to all arrivals, and very efficiently distributed the required paperwork to all participants;

• Thai Arrival / Departure card for the return from Cambodia
• Cambodia Visa application
• Cambodia Arrival / Departure card

You are required to turn up with your passport AND a 4×6cm passport photograph for the Cambodian visa application. The fee (as at 7th June 2006) was 1800 Tbht - approx US$45 and includes the 600 km round trip, visa fees, and lunch at the casino on the Cambodian side of the border. Lunch may either be buffet, or from the menu, depending on time of arrival.

Bus trip - leaves at 8am - and if you’re at all nervous, it would be best to request to watch a movie so you don’t get to see all the demented traffic hazards! Stopped for a 20 minute break approx 2.25 hours into the trip, arrived in Ban Laem just on midday.

First part of the process is the Thai Immigration OUT window… where they take your old Departure Card, check the dates and (hopefully) add the correct stamp!

Next, the Cambodian guys take your passport, visa application and Arrival / Departure card away for processing, and Claudio then escorts the group through the Duty Free hall and on to the Casino for lunch… Its fair to say that the transition point is not the most pristine corner of Paradise. There were numerous children clamouring for coins, a begger or three - complete with bowls…

Lunch was good - on this occasion it was from the modest menu, with plenty of nam yen or coke included. Nothing fancy, but tasty - what more could a man want? Takes about 45 minutes for the Cambodians to process the visas, and passports were being returned by the time lunch was completed. There was ample opportunity for a spot of duty free shopping for those interested. I was... hell, they don’t HAVE Jack Daniels at 7/11 or my Tesco Lotus Express!

Pleased to report it was genuine JD in the bottle too! And yes, I waited til I got home to Bangkok before checking!

Returning to Thailand was straightforward - go the the IN window, give the nice guy your passport and Thai Arrival / Departure card… it was duly stamped, and it’s back in the van and head back to Bangkok…

THAI VISA SERVICES RATING: 10 out of 10

Good service, well presented vehicle, smooth operation, all phases explained so everyone understood what happened next.

Would I go with Claudio again? Damn right!!!

Reservation: Phone 01-8154803; E-mail: visathai@gmail.com

Ben Kemp

aka The SEO Guy

Bangkok, Thailand
bjk@TheSeoGuy.co.nz

Making the decision to “winter-over” in Thailand was quite a significant step - although I believe that everyone should take some BIG steps from time to time. Hell, I like to keep people guessing by “re-inventing” myself at random intervals, mainly because it confuses them immensely… and makes it hard for them to “describe” or “categorise” me!

And unlike most people, I really enjoy being outside my “comfort zone.”

I really like Thailand! My ex-wife is Thai, so I’ve had over 8 years of cultural exposure, and of course suffer an addiction to chilli… I even have some (modest) language skills, and I’ve been to The Kingdom of Smiles a few times before… the girls are real pretty - and its my good fortune to have a new Thai GF… we met in May 2005 and she is possibly the only girl in Thailand not prepared to leave… so me moving here for the winter was a logical step in the development of that friendship.

Winter sucks, in my opinion! I don’t ski, and I feel the cold something fierce. Fortunately, I’m in a position where I can pretty much please myself what I do - and its 34C here!

I enjoy being a quintessential “road warrior.” The power of the Internet is such that my clients are usually quite unaware of my location. Most SEO jobs arrive directly off my web site and are negotiated via email. Our apartment has 1Mb Broadband Internet access, and I have a VoIP phone with an Auckland number, although it hardly ever rings.

The secret to road warrior success is being responsive - deal with your emails immediately! That way, they don’t escalate into phone calls!

When living in one country and working in another, perhaps the biggest challenge is the time zone difference. Thailand is 5 hours behind NZ, so if you sleep in until lunchtime, its after 5pm in NZ! I try not to do that to often… although it seems many clients sort out their emails in the evening, which works out well.

Remembering to turn the mobile phone off before you go to bed is important for domestic harmony, I’ve discovered. Having a 4am call from a client who is just starting his day at 9am in NZ is a challenge!

Global roaming - its important to bear in mind that if someone calls your cellphone and you are overseas, YOU pay!!! At an horrendous rate, I might add. So if you call me, and I promply offer to call you back, its because the cellphone call is costing ME a buck-fifty a minute, but the VoIP is only costing me 10 cents!

The first month is drawing to a close, so this week I get to do the Visa Run… As you enter the country, most foreign nationals are automatically granted a 30 day Visa. Getting it renewed is a significant bureaucratic challenge, apparently one to be avoided if at all possible! The standard solution is the “Visa Run” where you exit the country at a convenient border crossing, and then come back…

There is a whole industry built around this - and in Bangkok there are at least 3 companies competing for clients. On Wednesday, I get to test the services of Claudio at Sawasdee Transport Co Ltd, the plan is;

• 08.00 AM departure for Ban Laem, a new Border Crossing 300 km from Bangkok.

I’m optimistic all will go smoothly - and if not I’ve still got a couple of days grace before overstaying my visa! Was reading on a Thai ex-pat forum about some guy who went on the last (30th) day and the bus broke down 2 hours away from the border crossing… and whilst there is a modest penalty added to every day you overstay, its more the black mark in the records thats of concern - and you might not get back in!